X-Static Pro=CEss opens in Florence on June 23

As MadonnaTribe readers remember, the works of Steven Klein will finally reach Italy this month when his instant classics “X-Static Pro=CEss” and more recent works for Madonna’s re-Invention Tour such as “Chair” and “Hallway” will be on display in Florence from the end of June opening during the Pitti Immagine week. Today we’re happy to bring to our readers further information about this thrilling events for Madonna fans.

Gallery Hotel Art presents “X-STaTIC PRO=CeSS“, the first Italian exhibition of Steven Klein, an icon of fashion and celebrity photography who has collaborated with important maisons such as Calvin Klein, Christian Dior , Pepep Jeans and Dsquared and worked with stars like Madonna, Brad Pitt, Naomi Campbell, Ethan Hawke.

The upcoming exhibition marks the Italian premiere of one of Klein’s latest projects dedicated to Madonna:”X-STaTIC PRO=CeSS“, a collection of large format photographs and videos created especially for Madonna’s latest “Reinvention Tour“.

For some time now photography has existed in an expanded field that includes fashion, advertising, music, cinema and virtually every other aspect of the culture we live and breath every day. Steven Kleins “X-STaTIC PRO=CeSS“, his collaboration with Madonna, is a cross-fertilization of talent, medium and genre.

Steven Klein is one of the most versatile artists in the contemporary art world. He uses the means of video to expand the photographic means outwards, towards the condition of the moving image. To this end many of the still images of “X-STaTIC PRO=CeSS” have been animated with CGI, just as the moving images are often edited in such a way that they appear to be composed of sequenced stills. By approaching his subject in this way Klein refuses to indulge in photography as the fetishized outcome of an un-witnessed performance or event, but creates works that embody the very processes from which such conclusions are normally drawn.

Steven Klein probes beneath the celebrity skin to create images for which manifest content and latent meaning are held in perpetual conflict, and for all the seductions of surface, his is a subcutaneous view that literally digs beneath the surface to portray the muscular and emotional tension underneath – exposing the beast within. Tapping into the deeper currents of libidinal energy that flow through the pop persona he worries the stasis of the photograph into a state of convulsive and animated beauty. Here the regalia of the Queen is the myth of her own reign: to look at her looking at us is to see something that is both inside and outside – a moving image that inhales contradiction and exhales uncertainty.

GALLERY HOTEL ART presents
MADONNA: X-STaTIC PRO=CeSS
by STEVEN KLEIN

From June 23, 2005
Vicolo dell’Oro 5
50123 Florence

Thanks to Brancolini Grimaldi Arte Contemporanea and to our reader Lorenzo.

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